Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday August 01, 2012 @12:04AM
from the yes-no-maybe dept.

Un pobre guey writes "Should you develop apps for Windows 8? Well, the hype and flogging are apparently in full swing. From the article: 'To be clear, Windows Phone 8 is not a slam dunk. Some, such as IDC, believe Windows Phone will eclipse iOS by 2016. Others, though, believe the trajectories of Android and iOS can't be slowed in the next few years. Nonetheless, I think a bet on Windows Phone 8 is justifiable, even wise, since anyone who purchases a new Windows Phone 8 device likely will want to load it with the latest and greatest apps.'"
Another reader points out that the full Windows Phone 8 SDK was leaked online recently, which led to some interesting discoveries: "For starters, it appears that the API is very much like the full WinRT API, but it has no JavaScript support. There is also no support for creating and working with Silverlight/XNA style. This is a bit surprising because I and most developers were under the impression that Microsoft would support the migration of Silverlight apps to HTML5 and JavaScript, but there isn't even support for JavaScript to access the phone's services. The best you can hope for is using the JavaScript support in IE10."

The Android 'Fragmentation' is a red herring. If you are going to complain that there are more than one version of the OS in the wild, MS's phone OS is not what you could call "gotten right". Have they had a single version that could run the previous version's apps? 6, 6.5, 7 and now 8 are all completely incompatible with each other. And no phone gets updated to the new incompatible version.

Of course, maybe we are reading it wrong. Maybe the prediction that "WP8 will eclipse iOS by 2016" means that analyst thinks the 10 WP users will eclipse the 5 users left on iOS. It seems unlikely, but it seems just as likely as WP8 gaining as much market share as Apple has now.

Linux was a good idea, then the zealots got a hold of it and now its a pile of crap.

When exactly was it that "the zealots" wren't part of Linux? The GNU stuff was founded by zealots. The kernel came out of the Minix hobbyist community which have no interest in the sorts of standardization you are talking about.

Linux owns-- a huge chunk of the server market-- essentially all of the super computing market-- a huge chunk of the embedded market-- is becoming a major guest OS for new development on mainframe

The purpose of the GNU project was to create a free Unix on par with the commercial Unixes. Linux has killed off most off the commercial unixes. Digital Unix, , Irix, SCO are dead and HPUX, AIX and Solaris are on life support.

I don't think the Linux community has much to be unhappy about. That's a very successful OS by any standards and it achieved the goals of the GNU project. The enterprise and personal desktop market has had huge improvements since the mid 1990s and Linux hasn't been able to gain enough ground for those 2 segments. Oh well.

There is a very good reason they shouldn't support it. Windows mobile usage fell 40% in the last 3 years, that is during a time when the size of the market tripled. The reason developers never took to the platform is because customers won't buy it.

Mark Penn is the current CEO of astroturf and online sockpuppet firm Burson-Marsteller.Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it has added Mark Penn as the company's corporate vice president, strategic and special projects.Penn is expected to focus on consumer initiatives in his new role, reporting to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO and enthusiastic bottom Steve Ballmer. Penn, 58, is currently CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and CEO of polling firm Penn Schoen Berland LLC.